In addition to that, weve learned at least one phone call conversation between a line belonging to Michael Cohen and the white house was also intercepted. So right now, i think the key headlines, there was a wiretap associated with the search warrant in the investigation into Michael Cohen who is of course trumps personal attorney. The second thing weve learned is theres at least one phone conversation that was picked up on a phone line belonging to Michael Cohen and the white house. And the third is this was going on for several weeks before that search warrant took place. Ill let my colleague talk about it, this has been a discussion within the white house, but this is obviously just another step in the investigation and, as we know from court papers, federal prosecutors have already said they conducted covert surveillance of Michael Cohens emails leading up to the search warrant being executed. This is a lot more than just knocking on the door and just asking for some documents, kacie. Tom, thanks for that. Julia, i want you to weigh in with more on what we know. A call between Michael Cohen and the white house, what does that mean . We know theres a white house line. Presumably, that could have been the president , that could have been someone on his staff. But we do know that Rudy Giuliani gave his client, his new client, right after the cohen raid, the advice. Do not contact Michael Cohen. Its very possible his line has been tapped. Because he knew he had the legal evidence to be able to issue those search warrants to come into his offices, his hotel room. So he, being the long experienced lawyer that he is he just cant he made an assumption, dont call him, and he did anyway. The president . Yes, the president did. He rebuffed the advice of his lawyer. It turns out this was pretty good advice. Even before the raid a few weeks before, those lines had been wiretapped. As tom lays out, there is a legal bar to do that. Which shows they had to go to a judge and show there was enough evidence in order to be able to get that surveillance. Its another level of surveillance. Its another reason why giuliani and trump would be worried about what information federal investigators are able to get for Michael Cohen. Tom, to that point, just to be very, very clear, what is the standard for getting a wiretap like this . What would have had to unfold behind the scenes for this to occur . So, kacie, one of the things that would have had to happen is they would have had to say we tried every single investigative method we could possibly do short of wiretapping these phones, or if we tried those methods, any single in every single investigative method we would need, if we tried those methods, they would fail, and they would have to present that case, and these are not just three or four page warrant applications, these are significant affidavits filed presumably in this case by a special agent with the fbi who would lay out all the particulars as far as it goes to exhaustion, essentially anything we could try or anything we did try wont get us the information, that we have probable cause that we believe we can get on this wiretap. It lays out a tremendous cause as far as other evidence they would have come up with, that would have allowed them to convince a judge we have real reason to believe here we have some sort of criminal violation that occurred. In addition, typically, you have to lay out we talked to nbc legal analyst and former federal prosecutor chuck rosenbergen in regard to this. In actual manuals for u. S. Attorneys, typically it says you have to find evidence of an ongoing crime. This isnt typically where say we rob add bank five years ago they could come up to our phones today and say maybe we hope they talked about it. In this case, you can say this is an ongoing conspiracy to cover up that bank robbery or we were plan to rob another bank. Right, we may be lining up to rob another bank. I know thats kind of a silly cam pex example but i think its a good way of explaining exactly how this woe uld go down. And at the end of the day, a judge has to sign off on. Judges sometimes kick these back and say no, go back, i need you to try a couple more methods. Get me some more evidence that you think theres an actual crime here. This isnt something where a federal judge will just say, yes, you want to listen to somebodys phone conversation, sure, ill sign it right now. Thats not how this goes. Theres a significant Legal Process that has to occur here. Its laid out in one document that the Justice Department has to guide its attorneys. Its over 200 pages as far as some of the things you need to consider and some of the case law you have that allows you to do this. This is a complicated process and its one that needs to be signed off, like i said, by a federal judge. If youre a prosecutor, does it make a difference this man is an attorney or had at least served as the personal attorney to the president of the united states, tom . It makes a huge difference because there is the Attorney Client privilege issue that you have here. So you have to find a way to filter these conversations. The federal government has already said in public Court Filings they had a filter team set up for the email communications. Presumably they had a filter team set up here. You have a team thats not associated with the investigation thats listening to these calls saying, okay, this is clear Attorney Client privilege, we cant share this with the prosecutors. Cant share this with the investigators involved. Or they could say, you know what, this has to do with potentially an ongoing conspiracy, which is one of the reasons, one of the ways you can actually get information and communications between an attorney and a client. And so in that case, they could say, you know what, this falls to the search warrant, this falls to the crimes that we think are being committed. So actually we can let the Investigative Team know. We can let the fbi investigators know that are looking into this. In addition to that we can let the federal prosecutors that may bring charges. We should note, no charges have been brought against Michael Cohen. Its not been stated this is something that is going to occur. But they would be able to tell those federal prosecutors, hey, heres some of the things were picking up off this wire. A whole lot there, tom. And i want to bring Michael Avenatti into this conversation. Because, sir, this is of course your first chance to react to this breaking news here on nbc. What do you expect that these conversations that have been captured in this wiretap could mean for your case . I dont think theyre going to be positive for mr. Cohen and i dont think theyre going to be positive for mr. Trump. And i think they very well may include substantial evidence to assist us in our case. Heres what i think ultimately were going to find out. I dont think were going to find out this was confined just to email or voice wiretaps. I think they also, my understanding is, they were also wiretapping Text Message Communications for the weeks leading up to the fbi raids. I also think that ultimately it will be disclosed that during these wiretaps, the fbi learned of means by which Michael Cohen and others were going to potentially destroy evidence or documentation. Once they have that information in hand, that is what served as the predicate or basis to get the warrants to search the home, the office and the hotel room of Michael Cohen. This is going to be ultimately i think what the domino sequence will be. I think that mr. Trump and mr. Cohen, upon this upon learning of this, are going to be very, very concerned to the extent that they were not concerned already. This is a very serious matter. Im going to go back to what ive been saying for some time now. Theres no question in my mind that Michael Cohen will be indicted for serious federal crimes relating to likely 130,000 payment and other things, and i think that this increases the chances of what ive said previously. I dont think this president is going to serve out his term. I just dont. Mr. Avenatti, i want to clarify, you said you understand that text message conversations were also included. Is that a piece of information youve come into in the course of your work on this case or are you speculating . Im not speculating, thats a fact. Okay. And if, in fact, these i mean, were reporting this has all been collected, do you expect youll be able to see the contents of this communication or this will come to light in the course of your case . I think theres a likelihood thats going to happen. Where youll see it first come to light is in the action by the Southern District of new york u. S. Attorneys office in connection with whatever charges they bring at least initially or thereafter. Against mr. Cohen and others. But look, we also know that the president is not very disciplined and, in fact, we know he communicated with Michael Cohen not just before the fbi raids, but we know that he communicated with Michael Cohen after the fbi raids and we know that according to mr. Giuliani, his instruction occurred only in the last few days. So to the extent that the president had communications with Michael Cohen about our lawsuit, which was filed in early march, or this situation, or other transactions that they were concerned about, concerned about there potential liability, those Communications May very well now be on a recording in the possession of the fbi. I dont think the importance of this can be overstated. One other follow up just to what you said earlier quickly. You also said that you believed that some of these intercepted Text Messages showed that cohen intended to destroy evidence. Is that something also you know to be a fact or are you suggesting thats a possibility . I didnt state it was the intercepted Text Messages. I said ultimately it will be shown that the intercepted communications, whether those be by text email or verbal communications, serve as the basis for the warrants. In order to obtain three warrants of that magnitude against a sitting president s personal attorney, thats an incredibly high bar. Thats one of the only ways that you can obtain Something Like that is if you showed exigent circumstance, an emergency almost whereby it was likely that the target was going to be destroying evidence and documents. I think ultimately it will be shown that these intercepted communications served at least in part, a substantial part, as a basis for those warrants. I just want to jump in on one quick thing. Its not to cast any doubt on the information that michael has. I want to be clear for our audien audience. This was not an exigent circumstance warrant. None of the warrants associated with this were done for exigent circumstances. Tom, can you explain exigent circumstances. On the wiretap. Yes. On the wiretap, but all the warrants, all warrants in this case, my understanding is based on several discussions with people that have knowledge of the matter, is that these warrants were something that were typed up and filed and the reason for executing the search warrant did not have to do with necessarily something that was perhaps imminent as it related to as it related to the destruction of documents. If this was an exigent circumstance warrant, the way that warrant would be, is if there was a threat to imminent threat to life, property, something along those lines that somebody would say, you know, we need to get up on this wiretap now. Ill give you an example. In a terrorism case, typically exigent circumstance warrant might be filed because theres an eminent threat to life or the possibility of another attack. In this circumstance, the warrant i dont believe is classified that way. I have a little bit of an understanding as to why the warrant came in when it did, but thats not something im ready to report at this point. Thats not to suggest that michaels information is incorrect in that there was a possible concern here about the destruction of documents. I wouldnt say that thats wrong. And i just want to clarify, when i talk about exigent circumstances, im not talking about the warrant that led to the wiretap. Which is what your report is. Im talking about the subsequent warrants. The search warrants related to the home, the office and the hotel room. When i talk about exigent circumstance, im using that as a term of art as opposed to a term of science. Meaning they would have had to have shown some concern relating to the likely destruction of documents in my mind in order to get the magistrate to sign off on something of that magnitude. In order to have that search. Tom, thank you. John, i want to bring you in to the conversation as a former attorney, assistant attorney general. If you are sitting here looking at the facts of this case, youve got, you know, somebody who is serving, has served as the personal attorney to the president of the united states. Whats going through your mind when youre asking for this kind of thing . Yes, so lets look at big picture here, because theres been some confusion. What it looks like happened is that in the course of the mueller special counsel investigation, they uncovered evidence that theres criminal activity thats occurring thats outside the scope. Right. So this is beyond my referral. Mueller says to the Southern District of new york, hey, weve got all this information, take a look. Yes with one step removed. To the acting attorney general, rosenstein, my mandate is if i discover evidence that people are committing crimes, im not going to ignore it but im not going to follow every other crime. Im giving it to you to make the decision. And then gets referred to the Southern District of new york, a ledgendarily independent prosecutors office. They decide yes, theres a lot to investigate. How do we know that . Because in their filings, they said theyve been investigating this for months. Based on what they learned in the investigation, they then hit the high par of were dealing with an attorney. When you investigate attorneys, you go its privileged. Because of Attorney Client privilege, you go up to a higher standard where youre trying to look, was there any other means we can get this evidence that makes it the least likely im going to stumble into Attorney Client privilege. Based on analysis they decided to execute warrants. They did historical warrants on email. If the reports are true for the wiretap that required not just a proval at the field office in the Southern District of new york, but you got to get approval by the main justice career attorneys who have been there for Something Like 20, 30 years, who review these. It is painstaking process that most prosecutors will tell you they try to do that amount of paperwork, let alone the seriousness of it. It means that you werent able to get that evidence by any other means. Then they go and do a warrant on an attorneys office. The possibility would be if you thought that guy would be above board and respond, you would do it by subpoena or request, but they found evidence that led them to believe whatever crimes he was committing, he was likely to destroy, and this is where i think, it is likely they believed he would destroy evidence and there wasnt any other way to respond to getting this information other than search warrants approved by a judge. Right so what does that possibility mean in the context of this reporting . And just to reset a little bit for our viewers. Weve learned that federal investigators wiretapped the phone lines of Michael Cohen, the president s lawyer, and that one of the things that was intercepted was a call between cohen and the white house. Right, it shows that the breadth of the information that theyre able to gather from cohen. I mean, one of the things that giuliani has been kind of stamping out recently is this problem of who paid this 130,000 to Stormy Daniels. Right. Its almost like hes doing that in a way to think that thats all there is here. And now we know trump did it, no more to see. Actually theres more to see. Thats why muellers interested. Anything that may come up in the course of this investigation as john knows well, when they refer it outside, anything that can come up in the course of it can be referred to Robert Mueller. A lot of the conversations and a lot of documents would have come up during the two decades that cohens a personal attorney to the president , thats a lot of information he want, and they really want conversations, think this would lead to the wiretap, they want the details of the conversations now. Conversations after these news reports have bubbled up about what cohen might have done to repress anything during the campaign, how he might have worked for the campaign while he was really just a personal attorney. All of that information can come up when theyre able to get into those communications. Whether that be text, email or phone. I think this shows us how Michael Cohen is not just at the heart of the Stormy Daniels matter but hes at the heart of so much else. Its going to be really important to finding out what this president might have done that could be criminal. So does that potentially partly help could it possibly explain the story that maybe whatever strategy there may or may not have been behind the giuliani blitz of the media in the last 24 hours . Right. Clearly not a mistake. Hes been on over and over again. Right. He clearly, there was a strategy to go out and get ahead of this in a way trump previous legal teams have not been doing. He even used the word funneled. He funneled the money through the law firm. Not a term i would think you want your lawyer